Page 462 - Party Politics

Author Notes:

There are some things that are inextricably tied to who we commonly are as tabletop geeks. And one of them is how adventurers usually cope with high society situations - which is to say, not very well.

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I remember in a Shadowrun adventure, my country-gal mage was never one for fashion. She was a bit like AJ that way, but whenever we had a contract that involved infiltrating a fancy party, I was the only one who came in full ball-gown regalia with hair pinned up under a tiara and everything.

Everyone else would show up fully armed and maybe with a clean t-shirt.

Heh, reminds me of the disaster I described below. Three armored soldiers and an assassin in comfy black sweatpants kinda stick out in the noble districts.
Though in a fantasy setting, that's what Glamered armor is for!

Shiftweave. Lets you instantly switch between five different outfits. My mad scientist oracle queen would be in a lot of trouble without being able to instantly ditch the grease-stained overalls for a courtly gown.

Or a hat of disguise. I've had more than one adventuring group buy hats of disguise for everybody, and routinely wear them in town, to avoid trouble with the law.

One group, though... they just kept causing massacres, so after a while any group of disguised strangers who had one gigantic person with a battleaxe and another who kept fireballing crowds was assumed to be them.

Hats of Disguise work well. In Shadowrun magic items can be stupidly rare, but the flip-side is anyone can go into a Big Box Mart store, buy an outfit and some makeup, and then disguise themselves on the cheap for whatever they're doing.

I suppose my party infiltration tact would be drowned out now as a cheap knock-off, but who cares?

With most of the groups I play with, it was natural to crash the party and loot everyone there of the preciouses. One group of a rather more formal kind thought it best to try to do our entire mission WITHOUT interrupting the party in even the slightest.

To do that, we all (minus the one female of the group) dressed up as some of the parties slave butlers, and had the hardest time trying to figure out which masked individual was our mark. Leave it to say that our target was the most important figure in the room (and that our female-not-really-in-disguise knew how to act high society like).

^I've actually done both myself - played the part of "guest" and "servant" - and while servants usually seem to get full access to the mansion for looting and exploring, guests often get the best character interactions.

Therefore, I personally prefer being a guest too.

My greatest "guest" experience was with this Cleric I had in Dark Heresy (remember, cleric = social fighter in that setting).

In one mission, he'd disguised himself as a noble from some backwater planet & was at a party to gather intel (James Bond style). Since he was from a "backwater planet," he was able to act however the hell he wanted, and everyone dismissed it as him being "eccentric."

So, I ended up finding the most obviously out-of-place, low-born (I could tell by the quality of her dress), shy (but pretty) woman at the party. Then, I spent the whole night dancing with her and making a grand spectacle (I think I rolled something like a crit on my dance check). Everyone at the party was so impressed with our dancing, I ended up being able to talk to all the important NPC party goers (while also introducing them to my "date" as well).

By the end of the night, I'd become addicted to an illegal drug, witnessed a high society murder, picked a fight with a douche who sported diamond teeth, and bested him in an illegal pit fight duel - but the thing I liked most about that adventure was knowing that I'd helped a nice wall-flower have the night of her life (;

I like to imagine that my character went on to visit said lady in his off-time between Inquisitorial missions.

It was US civil war campaign and the PCs managed to get a hold of a small train. They just beat one of the BBEG's main minions and were supposed to head to DC so they can alert the president of the plans the Confederates were making to build an iron-clad train that didn't need tracks (essentially a tank).

Oh wait! We have a train! Fried Chicken run!!

The PCs instead took their train south into Alabama in search of the country's best southern meal. This ended up causing them to face off with a brigade armed with chainguns, setting fire to the city of Huntsville when they tried to "overclock" their train's boiler, and befriending a drunken Confederate lieutenant who spilled information on where Robert E. Lee was.

In a game I was in, our group was going to find an old dwarf about 40 miles out in a mountain to ask him about recent dwarf disaperances. Not sure why we thought he'd know anything, though, now that I think of it. Anyway, we were probably expected to just go straight there, but I decided to find a caravan or something to protect on the way there, since there was a city nearby and it'd let us get paid for doing something we'd have to do anyway. We ended up escorting a small family of four all the way there, and ran into a pack of wolves that I honestly think were just put there because the DM didn't have any plans for us doing that.

Shortly afterwords, a bear showed up. Apparently we were in his cave, which nobody, including the druid, realized belonged to a bear. So the druid decided to use diplomacy on the bear, and got enough high rolls for it to work. Again, not really the DM's plan, and this time he decided to make us pay a bit. We were hoping the bear would take the wolf bodies as payment to let us go without a fight, but he decided those were just his since they were outside of his cave, so no negotiating with those. Then, somehow, the bear made the druid promise to come back in three months to do a quest for him. He wouldn't say what it was, either, and the group fell apart before we got to find out. In an in game 'letters home' thing my character was doing, I made a point that that was an incredibly intelligent bear, and that we were never letting the druid handle diplomacy alone again, because damn. How to you come out so far behind in an agreement with a bear?

Eventually, when we made it to the city the DM said that everything that attacked (a few groups of kobalds attacked us too) only did so to get to us, so the family wouldn't have been in danger if we hadn't gone. I think he was trying to guilt us into not doing something like that again. It failed, because I pointed out those wolves would've attacked either way, and without us the family would've died. Things happened after that that I'd like to tell you guys, but they don't really fit the story time prompt. I'll save that for one where NPCs don't give you very relevant information that would stop you from wasting time and doing something they don't want you to do anyway.

It wasn't much of one, but my 5th ed warlock is determined to use her Calm Emotions spell on freaking SOMETHING, and I was trying to diplomacy roll against about 6 orcs. Due to the fact that I was at the back of the group of 6 people in a 5' wide corridor, the best I managed was to use one of my two spells to cast Tongues on the rogue, who was closer, so she could talk to them. They immediately turned around and left.

Out of game, the arguing about the whole affair, whether we should bother trying to talk to them or not, took about 2 hours. For like, 3 rounds of combat or so.

...ah, there we are. Dunno why it wouldn't show up for me until 6:12.
I really like Pinkie here; players prejudiced against the nobility are fun.
Heh, high society fiascos... Had one of those in the debut session of a Dark Heresy game last night. We, a mercenary company on a Hive World, had been contracted to kill a noblewoman who overspent, leaving her ripe for an attempt on her life by her peers - through us, of course. We went into the Upper Hive where the nobles dwelt, looking for intel on our mark, and were promptly led by one PC seeking "a watering hole where people might spill their secrets." We found a cafe, and the clientele weren't happy to see five heavily armed individuals stroll brazenly in. We tried smoothing things over by buying some hideously expensive drinks, but then one character threw a tantrum on learning that coffeeshops don't sell smokes before the veteran had a chance to share his.
The barista tripped the silent alarm, I made the Perception check to notice just well enough to see a blinking red light & drew the wrong conclusion, electing to dive for cover... And then the cops showed up to order us out.
So not only did we alienate potential sources of info and make fools of ourselves, but we also made enough of a stir to put the target on high alert. Not that it saved her.

One of the benefits of running a Rogue Trader crew is that you have some very heavy social weight simply by virtue of your trader license. It opens all kinds of doors, and any "eccentricities" (say, running around with a brace of ornate plasma pistols and a gold-and-lace carapace great coat) simply make you that much more intriguing for the typical hive noble.

One of our missions involved trying to track down some information relating to a bit of inter-House rivalry (I cannot remember the exact details, but I think it involved kidnapping and murder). We gussied up (armored clothing instead of full-on Carapace or Power Armor, only Best-Quality guns and swords openly displayed, no heavy weapons, etc.) and started mingling.

I was running our crew's Arch Militant (think a sort of combo of master-of-arms, first officer, and ship champion), and one of our targets was making a lot of noise and wearing a very flashy-looking sword. I managed to get him to provoke me publicly and challenged him to a duel, which our respective seconds decided to hold right there at the party (far better entertainment than the music and dancing).

He was a pretty tricked out combat encounter and I wasn't expecting to win, but somehow I managed to eek out a couple of key rolls and wound up defeating him pretty handily, with a lot of flash that really impressed the crowd. That got us our first bit of intel in the aftermath and led us to a few other leads.

On the other hand, there's trying to mingle at a party when running an Inquisitorial Stormtrooper Null who's packing a suspensor-assisted multi-laser with backpack ammo supply and best-quality Stormtrooper Carapace. Some people can't pass as anything other than what they are, so the best I could do is play the bodyguard to our Inquisitor and try not to mess up too many social encounters. Nulls are especially bad at that kind of thing.

Ha. Pinkie, you have an eccentric personality, and can somehow get away with it here in Canterlot (sort of), but we all know why you really want to party (other then to celebrate a real birthday early and in game), and because you want others to Smile and Laugh with you.

Okay, so, in our AirGears game, our group had just overcome our first Devil's 30/30 challenge, and had blown our genetically modified competition out of the water, so, the DM suggested that when we got back to our hotel... for some reason, Ewan MacGregor was at the hotel too and we all decided to party, by the end of it, Charlie Sheen had shown up as well (hell if I know or remember why) and everyone was doing shots, whereas my Daddy's daughter of a character, who had spent her life just practicing her track skills was suddenly pulled aside by Charlie Sheen, had a little talk where he was the one who said pretty much the entire thing, and forced to have a drink. And I'm sitting there the entire time, going, "Uh, yeah, no. My character doesn't drink. Especially not when Dad is sitting a couple tables away."
Smokes when no one's around, sure, but that's more to explain the lighter she always had on hand, because her theme was fire, thanks to Dad being the King of the Flame Road.
But anyway, the DM was adamant that my character take a shot, he literally wouldn't let the party end until I had. Of course, I think it was more the DM's alcoholism butting up against my personal preference not to drink liquor when it gets offered, but I can't prove that. It was a clear moment when my character would have been extremely uncomfortable with the party.

Funny story, last week our DM was out, so we ran a one-off campaign just using the same characters. It was at a festival being held in the poor district of the city because our dwarven warrior(Stumpy) had opened up a soup kitchen. I went into a shop to see what it had in terms of hats(this included jester hats, top hats, even a dragon hat). I ended up finding one that was made out of bacon. 3 pence later and I was proudly sporting my new bacon hat, until it started to grow. We ended up fighting the disguised chaos creature after it was removed from my head with a crowbar. The shop had disappeared in the meantime and after heading to the mage's college to inquire we ended it for the night, thinking that would be it. Then last night, because the DM couldn't make it again, we decided to continue the one-off(At this point, our dwarf decided to switch characters to a mutant anthropomorphic octopus with 9 limbs). We woke up to find glowing words in Draconic taunting us before saying that there was more to come, before hearing noise outside that tuned out to be a brawl between Templars and summoned creatures and oozes. We headed to the Mage's college, where it turned out that something had taken over the upper floors. The climb up included:
1. Our halfling rogue getting roasted by a fireball trap
2. A portion of the wall that could talk, and described the mysterious substance on it as hair.
3. a giant drooling mouth on the ceiling which after defeated spat out a major artifact that came close to being game-breaking(it ended up being a ring that only negated 30 ice damage per instance)

We have declared that this campaign be used whenever the DM can't make it. All because I bought a bacon hat...

The second-most-recent Shadowrun character I made was reasonably prepared for social events. She never got to break out the Zoé cocktail dress, but she had it. The idea was that it would be fancy enough for use at society things, where she might conceivably be hired as a bodyguard, or just go to mingle on her own.

It probably never would have been used otherwise, though, as the other members of the party consisted of a pair of fraternal twin Technomancers with the social graces of a pair of ostracized twins, and a duo of Free Spirits with all the social grace of literally alien beings.

And a ninja.

But hey, *I* was prepared! Pity the game didn't last more than four sessions.

Is my character good at social functions? Depends entirely on the character. And I mean the Character, not class/skills.

Once I played a diplomancer cleric who couldn't blend into high society. He was polite and charming, sure, but he was a country preacher and fith son on the family farm, and while he knew plenty about how to be polite and how to treat a lady, he "don't know nothin' bout how ta do at a fancy dinner deal."

On the other hand, a fighter I once played as vicious and merciless fit right in at a formal ball. He was the second son of a noble, and only went on adventures to secure his own private fortune since he wasn't likely to inherit. Since he was nobility, he knew all about formality and courtly charm. He couldn't negotiate for beans, but when it came to simple talk and the empty flattery of the nobility he was a pro.

In our current Vampire game we did the usual "meet-n-greet". Now my character is insane, and I dont mean wacky like say pinkie pie. No he is actually insane. At the time I hadn't entirely nailed down specifics, but he was prone to random manic acts with no concern to how it might harm him.

So at this fancy dinner party he went over to the hottest woman there (who was a powerful noble) and do his, as he put it, "mating dance"

Long story short, we were attacked and he became known as the guy that took the dead bodies home with him.

A-Ha! That's a game system I haven't started the Mane 6 or derivatives thereof in... Twilight --> Tremere & Pinkie --> Malkavian, those are fairly clear... Venture and Brujah for Rarity & Applejack, respectively? I'm out of practice, but their Disciplines seem like good fits. Brujah for Dash, too, because not many clans get Celerity, especially sticking to core, and... Eh, screw core, but Brujah still suits her better than Assamite. Though if non-core is in, then Fluttershy seems like a definite Salubri - kind healers, closest thing vampires have to saints, with some anger issues over the whole you-ate-our-progenitor's-soul mess with Tremere. That could make for an interesting conflict with Twilight.. Yeah, I may use those as NPCs, or even PCs, if I ever play Vampire: the Masquerade. I already have pseudo-Latin names for them from when I was converting preextant characters into a custom setting's pantheon...

I have never once played a game of DND, but after years of hearing about it, I managed to get this far and love the comic, Best thing I have seen that was pony related in 3 years in fact! So this is a shout out to any new readers that make it this far!